"The Book of Orange" Excerpt

June 14, 2011

Although it arrived on the scene a little later than the
other UK-based amp companies often cited as having
“the British sound,” Orange quickly expanded the perception
of that tone and established a reputation for loud, delectably
raunchy amps with equally transfixing cosmetics and eminently
giggable construction. Players as diverse as Jimmy Page, Johnny
Winter, B.B. King, Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, Ike Turner,
and T. Rex’s Marc Bolan were fans of early Orange amps.

Though the company had its ups and downs—including
a run of extremely reduced production through the
1980s, in addition to a period when Gibson built Oranges
under license—it has experienced something of a renaissance
over the last 13 years since company founder Cliff Cooper
returned to the helm. Highlights of the last decade include
the Rockerverb, AD, and TH series guitar amps, Isobaric
bass cabinets, and the venerable Tiny Terror series—the latter
of which rocked the entire guitar-amp universe and started
the “lunchbox amp” craze of the last few years.

Orange recently released a new book, The Book of
Orange, to celebrate this proud and storied legacy. The
“flipbook” has two sections—“The Book of Orange” and
“Building the Brand”—each of which begins at one end of
the book and meets the other in the middle. It covers everything
from glorious gear-nerd details to the entrepreneurial
struggles that Cooper faced while establishing the company.
Regardless of which you’re more interested in, you’re bound
to enjoy The Book of Orange—for even those with an encyclopedic
knowledge of the brand are bound to come across
some rare tidbits heretofore unknown to the vast majority
of guitarists. With the kind permission of Cooper and his
iconic company, we’ve selected a few portions we found particularly
fascinating and excerpted them here.

In the Beginning…

The CTI Pixy Mk V
Transistor micro
guitar amp

“In 1966, I built my
original studio on
the first floor of a commercial
building I had
rented in Amity Road,
Stratford, East London.
Neighbours soon started to
complain about the noise,
so I had the idea of making
a miniature transistor
guitar amp and fitting it
with an earpiece.

CTI stood for ‘Cooper
Technical Industries.’
About a year later, other
companies were bringing
out similar products
which could be used with
headphones.

I made the Pixy amplifier
on a tag board and I
found that this worked
very well. The earpiece
was a crystal design made
by ACOS and the amp
itself was powered by a
9-volt battery which [fit]
into the base of the unit.
For the case, I rolled thin
aluminium using a metal
form, and covered it in
black vinyl. The circuitry
[fit] into this case. I named
it the CTI Pixy Mk V …
there weren’t any earlier
ones but I figured Mk V
was a good starting point.

I remember going to the
Melody Maker offices, where
I met two journalists—
Chris Hayes and Chris
Welch. I showed them the
Mk V and asked if they
could give me a write-up in
their weekly music paper.
They told me that they
couldn’t personally help
me, but put me in touch
with the advertising department,
who then quoted
me what I considered to
be a small fortune for a
half-page advertisement.
Needless to say, I decided to
economise and take a small
square space advert instead.
I was really surprised when,
within a month, I had sold
about a hundred for just
under £2 each.”

My first ever trade advertisement

Step 1: Creating the
Orange Sound
In the early 1960s,
Yorskhireman Ernest Tony
Emerson was a member of
The British Interplanetary
Society—a group of H.G.
Wells-inspired, space-age
futurists. He designed a
state-of-the-art hi-fi amplifier,
the Connoisseur HQ20.

His friend, Mat Mathias,
owned Radio Craft—a small
repair business based in
Huddersfield. In early 1964,
Mat employed Tony as a
design engineer, and with the
HQ20 as a starting point,
Mat then built his own
guitar amplifier called the
Matamp Series 2000, which
was initially a 20-watt, and
then a 30-watt model.

Cliff Cooper Takes up
the Story:

The Connoisseur HQ20, designed by Tony Emerson

“In the beginning, manufacturers
would not supply
the Orange Shop with new
equipment for us to sell, so
I decided to build my own
amplifiers. I had studied
electronics at college, which
of course assisted me greatly.
Soon, we were looking for a
company to manufacture our
amplifiers.

“We had a choice of two
or three firms but decided
to go with Mat Mathias of
Radio Craft. The amps that
Mat made were basically
hi-fi guitar amplifiers. They
were very clean sounding
and beautifully built, but
when he sent a sample down
to us we found we needed to
modify it somewhat because
it didn’t sound quite right
for the market we were aiming
for. It was great for bass
guitars because it was so
clean, but it was too clean
and flat for electric lead guitars.
The new generation of
guitarists back then wanted
more sustain, which you
don’t really get with a clean
sound. Therefore, in our first
year we modified the front
end and changed the chassis
material from lightweight
aluminium to robust enamelled
steel.

“We designed the Orange
logo so that it would be bold
and clearly visible onstage,
and sent it up to Radio Craft
for use on our front panel.
Mat then suggested that we
put a small Matamp logo on
it as well, which we gladly
agreed to do. Mat assembled
our first amps in the back
room of his tobacconist shop
in Huddersfield town centre.
The first Orange speaker
cabinets were made and covered
in the basement of the
Orange Shop.”

Step 2: Projecting
the Orange Sound
In December 1968, Mick
Dines [right] joined
the company as a salesman
in the Orange Shop.
He immediately became
involved in the design of the
Orange cabinets. As a young
bass guitarist he understood
how equipment could be
so easily mistreated on the
road. His first priority was
to make Orange cabinets
the most solid and robust
cabinets available. When
it came to choosing the
speaker front cloth, his main
concern was durability.

Mick chose a tough
material called Basketweave.
Orange speaker cabinets
could now certainly take the
knocks and were appreciated
by the roadies. Guitarists
loved the “thickened” sound
that the Basketweave helped
to create. What’s more,
the Orange 4x12 was 15"
deep—until then, 14" was
the norm. This extra depth
also helped to define the
distinctive “Orange sound.”

40th Anniversary
Limited Edition 4x12

[Cliff Cooper continues]
“When I first noticed
the Marshall 4x12, I
thought it was made of
very thick plywood, but
then when I looked more
closely, it wasn’t as thick as
it looked—it had an extra
wooden frame border fixed
inside the front rim of the
cabinet to create the illusion
of thicker wood. I had
the idea of having a picture
frame rather than a rim on
our own 4x12 cabs. That
design was a first for us. It
made Orange cabs and amp
heads look very unique.
The design remains almost
unchanged today.

“The 4x12 was built to
be very strong and featured
a baffle centre post, 13-ply
(18 mm) birch-faced marine
plywood and a tough
orange vinyl cloth covering
called Rexine. The use of
Basketweave really helped to
define the ‘Orange sound.’
Instead of fitting plastic feet
or casters, which we found
tended to rattle and roll,
we came up with the idea
of having tough wooden
runners—which we called
“skids.” The original idea
was durability, making
loading and unloading out
of vans or onstage easier. It
turned out that the skids
dramatically improved the
sound by acoustically coupling
the cabinets to the
stage or wooden floor.”

Step 3: Shaping the
Orange SoundCliff Cooper on the University Sound Lab Tests
“During 1969, we
sampled the
sounds used by a number
of top guitarists—among
them, Peter Green, Marc
Bolan, and Paul Kossoff,
all of whom liked to spend
time in the Orange Shop
just chatting and playing
guitars. We asked these and
other professional guitarists
to plug into our mixing
desk, play around, and
find the sound that they
liked best. We were then
able to measure the sound
characteristics and decide
what changes were needed
to the Orange amp circuitry.
We would then send these
circuitry changes to Mat up
in Huddersfield so that he
could incorporate any modifications
into our amplifiers.
Basically, it was a question of
what our customers wanted.

“As Orange became more
established, we found that
a lot of people liked our
amps, but it wasn’t across the
board. Many guitarists told
us that our amps just didn’t
sound as loud as some other
makes, watt for watt. Using
signal generators, oscilloscopes,
and other measuring
equipment, we measured an
Orange OR120 amplifier in
our workshop. It gave out a
true 120 watts RMS (root-mean-square). We then measured
another famous make
of 100-watt amplifier, which
gave 96 watts output—but
it still sounded much louder
than the Orange amplifier.
We just couldn’t figure out
why this was. At the same
time, we tested the distortion
levels. The other amplifier
had a far more distorted
sound than the Orange amp.

“I arranged a meeting
with a leading ear specialist
with a practice in London’s
Harley Street. He explained
to me how the brain can
register distortion as pain in
order to protect the mechanism
of the ears. The jagged
harmonics produced by the
distortion work the ear’s
conducting bones harder,
and this is perceived by the
audio nerves as an increase
in sound level. The original
Orange amps were especially
clean sounding, with very
little distortion. And so it
was, in fact, the clean sound
that was the root of our
problem. So, thanks to the
ear specialist, we had solved
the mystery. In order to correct
the situation, we gave
the amp a lot more gain and
modified our circuitry in
a different way [than] the
amplifiers we had tested.
The main changes were to
the tone stack at the front
end and the phase inverter.
These changes gave birth
to the ‘Orange sound’ and
were incorporated in the
first ‘Pics Only’ amps—our
amps with hieroglyphs.
The sound perhaps is
best described as ‘fat’ and
‘warm’—more musical and
richer in harmonics, with
a unique saturation in the
mids band. It also improved
the sustain. That said,
choice of sound, naturally, is
a personal thing.”

The Pics Only
Graphic: Root of
the Orange Sound

Mick Dines elaborates
on the Pics Only amp.
“The ‘Graphic Valve
Amplifier’ was designed inhouse
by John James in 1971,
and manufactured during the
period 1972–75. It was soon
nicknamed the ‘Pics Only,’ a
reference to the front-panel
graphics which were unique at
that time. Earlier versions had
Woden or Drake drop-through
transformers, later ones had
Parmeko. A four-channel PA
version was introduced (pictured
at top right). Some Pics
Onlys were made and sold
right up until 1975, especially
Slave 120 Graphics (pictured
at bottom right), in order to
use up stock and components.
There was often this kind of
overlap when a new Orange
series was introduced.

“Early Graphic Pics Onlys
soon became known as
‘Plexis,’ because they had a
plastic reverse-printed Perspex
panel secured on an orange
steel backplate fixed to the
chassis. The amplifier was
secured into the cabinet with
four front-panel fixing bolts
with plastic seating washers.
The panels on later Pics Only
amps were not plastic, but
silkscreen printed metal plates
with no visible plates.

“In hindsight, the
graphic icons were perhaps
a bit too big and
prominent on the Plexi.
So in 1973, we went back
to the drawing board and
redesigned the front panel,
as well as making other
electronic modifications.
The result was the Graphic
120 ‘Pics & Text’ amplifier.
The Pics Only was
the start of the new sound
that everybody associates
with Orange, and it has
influenced the design and
sound of Orange amps
ever since.”

Cliff Cooper
Explains the
Orange Graphics“I got the idea for
graphic symbols
on our amplifiers when I
noticed the new road signs
which suddenly appeared
in the late 1960s. Instead
of words, the signs used
graphic symbols. In 1971, I
suggested to the team that,
instead of using words,
we should use our own
custom symbols. I wanted
us to keep one step ahead.
Years later, when we started
manufacturing again in the
1990s [Ed. note: Orange’s
main manufacturing operation
closed in 1979, though a
limited number of amps were
built on a custom-order basis.
In the early to mid 1990s,
Gibson also built Orange
amps under license until
Cliff Cooper returned to head
the company in 1998.], we
decided to keep the graphics—
these hieroglyphs were
now a part of the brand.

“The Orange logo on our
amps is now near perfect,
whereas if you look at the
original logo, it was hand
drawn. The reason for this is
simple—there weren’t computers
in those days, and
you had to engage an artist
to draw it using French
Curves (as shown on the right).”

The Custom
Reverb Twin
The Custom Reverb
Twin, designed by
John James, had two channels:
Normal Channel (One)
had two inputs for Hi and
Lo gain, as well as Bass,
Treble, and Volume controls.
Brilliant Channel (Two) also
had the Hi- and Lo-gain
inputs [and] Bass, Treble,
Middle, and Volume controls.
The intensity of the reverb
was adjusted by a Depth
control. The tremolo had
separate Speed and Depth
controls. A Master Volume
and [a] Presence operated
on both channels. The Mk
1 Reverb Twin combo (not
shown) had a Basketweave
front cloth, but very few
were ever made during
1975. The Mk 2 [the head
version is shown above]
featured a black-with-silver-fleck
speaker cloth.

Cliff Cooper on the OMEC Programmable Digital Amps
“OMEC stands for
Orange Music
Electronic Company. We
chose the word ‘electronic’ to
suggest digital and transistorized
amplifiers, as opposed
to the valve amps that had
established the Orange brand
in the early 1970s. OMEC’s
main products in the mid
1970s were the programmable
digital amp, the Jimmy
Bean solid-state amp, and—
most successful of all—the
Jimmy Bean Voice Box. We
sold thousands of those.

“The OMEC Digital was
the world’s first digitally programmable
amplifier, which
enabled musicians to key-in
four different preset, instantly
recallable sounds. There
were seven sound controls
that could be programmed
into each of the four presets:
Volume, Bass, Treble,
Reverb, Sustain, and two
specified effects … fuzz and
tremolo. The amp’s power
rating was 150 watts into 4
ohms. We spent a lot of time
and money developing this
revolutionary digital amp,
and it still really upsets me
to recall how we never really
got the chance to market it
properly. The reason for this
was that the bank wouldn’t
lend me the capital needed to
develop this product in order
to make it cost effective.

“Back then, bank managers
were very Victorian in
attitude and usually wore stiff
white collars and dark ties. If
you had long hair, there was
little or no chance of being
able to borrow money, and if
you looked young you were
unlikely to get past your
bank manager’s secretary.
Before I went to ask my
bank for a loan to develop
the Digital amplifier’s chip,
I had a haircut and grew a
sort of a beard in order to
look older. Needless to say,
it proved to be a total waste
of time and my application
was turned down. Had I
been living in America, I’m
sure things would have been
very different. There, they
judged you on the merits
of your business plan—not
your appearance.”

At press time, this was the only known OMEC Digital amplifier
in existence. Features include, (left to right): 1) a socket for a
remote-control unit (far right) with channel-select footswitches
and effects in/out sockets, 2) a switching-mode button, 3) a
keypad for selecting the function marked at the top of each button
(Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, three Distortion types, Compressor/Sustain, and Hammond reverb), the level of the selected function,
or the channel to be programmed/played, 4) In and Out buttons
for activating the effects loop, 5) a numerical channel display that
shows you which of the four preprogrammed channels you are
using.
Photo kindly provided by the owner, Billy Claire

Designer Peter Hamilton on the OMEC
“I designed the OMEC
amp in 1974-75.
Before that, I spent a few
months as a student fixing
amps part-time in the
Orange Shop’s basement,
and then worked with
them full-time for about
one year—my first job.
The brief was to ‘design a
computerized amp.’ With
some computers costing
upwards of a million
pounds and needing their
own building and air-conditioning
plant, a few compromises
were necessary.

“Some weird, new-fangled
things called ‘microprocessors’
were beginning to
appear in the early to mid
1970s, but they needed a lot
of ‘support chips’ to make a
useful system. Smaller single-chip
microcontrollers existed
for things like calculators,
but they were permanently
mask-programmed . . . the
tooling costs were huge, and
they were only affordable if
manufactured in big quantities—
hundreds of thousands.

“The only sane way to
do this job was with SSI and
MSI (small- and medium-scale
integration) logic chips.
The choice was between TTL
(transistor-transistor logic),
which was power-hungry but
easy to get hold of and well-proven,
or a new technology
from RCA called COS-MOS
[aka CMOS], which used
hardly any power but also
had a habit of self-destructing
due to static damage.

“COS-MOS was too risky
at the time, but that technology
led to today’s CMOS
microcontrollers, with built-in
static protection, low power
consumption, and millions
of transistors on a chip—one
of those could handle the
whole job for a few dollars. So
the OMEC Digital amp was
really a digitally controlled
analogue amp. Real DSP
[digital signal processing] was
a couple of decades away. The
left-hand digital half of the
board allowed numbers for
each parameter (Volume,
Bass, Mid, Treble, Reverb,
Compression, and Distortion)
to be stored in memory for
each of four ‘channels.’

“Those numbers could be
recalled by selecting a channel
either from the front
panel or the footswitch.
The memory controlled the
audio circuitry on the righthand
half of the board via
analogue switches.

“But there was a slight
snag: TTL is so power-hungry
[that] the memory
took almost an [ampere] at
5V, so all the settings were
forgotten if the power was
switched off! A backup battery
was added to protect
against brief power cuts,
but it only lasted for half
an hour or so.

“Here was an idea before
its time, I’m afraid. It was
innovative, but there wasn’t
a knob that went up to
11. I doubt that it was
financially viable without
investing a large amount
of money. Months later,
the Z80 and 6502 microprocessors
appeared and
spawned the personal computer
industry. The rest, as
they say, is history.”